When asked about the situation, Richard Plepler, CEO of HBO, had this to say:

Plepler said late Wednesday that HBO GO could be packaged with a monthly Internet service, in partnership with broadband providers, reducing the cost. Customers could pay $50 a month for their broadband Internet and an extra $10 or $15 for HBO to be packaged in with that service, for a total of $60 or $65 per month, Plepler explained. “We would have to make the math work,” he added.

OK, we’ve got to ask: What math?

Realistically speaking, anybody who subscribes to HBO, through cable, is somebody who really wants cable. Like, a lot. You’re not paying a minimum of ten bucks a month on top of an average bill of $86 just to watch HBO. The real killer app for cable companies is sports.

On the other hand, anybody who cuts the cord obviously isn’t going to come back to cable because, holy crap, you might miss an episode of Girls! But they probably are willing to pay ten bucks a month to access HBO Go.

Also, most people probably use companies like Comcast for broadband anyway, so all HBO Go going streaming free would really do is recapture some of that revenue from cord-cutters.

Of course, just the word “cord-cutters” makes cable companies hiss in fear, so this might be a rockier road than it looks.

I’m a chord cutter, and since HBO doesn’t offer a subscription service through Amazon or iTunes I pretty much have to use pirated streams. The sooner they do this, the sooner I can give them my money, which I’m very happy to do.

Fourth’d, you wouldn’t think it’d be so hard to give consumers something other than the “All or nothing” option. I’d gladly pay for the shows I pirate, but nope instead you are asking me to pay for 5 billion other shows I wouldn’t watch if you payed me…

iTunes in Australia have released a ‘season pass’ for $33.95 which automatically downloads each episode for you, although it’s released 2 days after it airs in the US. Is iTunes anywhere else offering this?

Actually, the majority of cable subscribers don’t watch the regional sports networks. That is why channels like YES and SNY don’t want to be premium, they want to be part of the basic package and charge the cable providers.

And the current model of regional sports networks on cable is about to crumble anyway.